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To Dress a Haunch of Mutton

A haunch of mutton is washed, coated in a coarse flour paste, left to set, then cooked and served with gravy and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and currant work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

To Dress a Haunch of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the haunch

  1. Wash the haunch with warm milk and water or vinegar if necessary.

  2. Cover the haunch with a paste made from coarse flour and strong paper.

  3. Place it far from the fire and allow time for the paste to set.

Roast and baste

  1. Remove the paste 35-40 minutes before serving and baste continually.

  2. Bring the haunch closer to the fire before removing the paste and froth it up as you would venison.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Simmer the loin of mutton in 1 pint of water until reduced by half, seasoning only with salt.

  2. Brown the gravy with a little burnt sugar and serve it with the haunch along with currant jelly sauce.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Vinegar + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Mutton + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together615 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

  5. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Haunch of mutton
Is the main cut of meat that is cooked and served as the centrepiece of the dish.
Coarse flour
Forms the protective paste casing that encloses the haunch during cooking.
Loin of old mutton
Simmered in water to make the flavourful base for the gravy.
Burnt sugar
Darkens the gravy and adds a slightly bitter caramel flavour and colour.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and tartness to the sauce served alongside the meat.

The step that matters

Removing the paste and frothing the haunch. Timing matters: removing the paste too early leaves the meat unprotected, while moving the haunch close to the fire too late may not brown it well. Basting continually keeps the surface moist as it roasts.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, flour, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, vinegar, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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